


No Higher Place

by sophinisba



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Community: merlinblitz, F/M, Feelings, Gen, Introspection, Maps, Season/Series 03-04 Hiatus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-09
Updated: 2014-03-09
Packaged: 2018-01-15 03:47:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 534
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1290103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sophinisba/pseuds/sophinisba
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lancelot finds himself in the middle of the map.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Higher Place

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the second weekly challenge at merlinblitz and the prompt "off the map".

Gwaine was the one to show Lancelot how to read the map. He’d learned it from Merlin, who learned it from Arthur. It made sense to Arthur to have to explain it to a peasant like Merlin. It would never had occurred to him that some of his own knights needed that help. That they hadn’t grown up knowing their own place, looking down over it all from the parapet of a castle at the top of the world.

“Smack dab in the middle of everything,” Gwaine says, the tip of his finger touching the drawing of the very tower where they stand now, looking off toward the eastern hills.

Lancelot nods. “And the eyes of all the kingdom looking to us.”

Though it’s much too far off for their eyes to see from the tower, Lancelot knows that Merlin’s home lies past those hills. Merlin added the drawing and the label himself – the ink is darker and newer than the rest of the map, the letters rounder and less careful. He’s made to look almost as big and important as Camelot, though it’s squeezed in at the edge of the page, past the line that marks the edges of the kingdom.

Lancelot has pored over the map in private until he found his own village, marked as small and insignificant as ever it was in Uther’s plans. In all his childhood there and his wanderings since he’d never known quite where to place himself in relation to the Citadel, the kingdom that stood for order but stood a little too far away. He hasn’t said the name of his parents’ home aloud, not to Gwaine or Arthur or anyone. If he were as bold as Merlin he’d spill a blot of ink and make it disappear.

The past is gone forever and good riddance to it. “This is where I’ve always wanted to be,” he tells Gwaine now, and the surge of warmth and pride swells out his chest for a moment, as always when he thinks of serving his prince and his lady, his brothers and his people. 

And as always, it leaves him puffed out and hollow.

Because it was the hope of a life very much like this one that kept him breathing through all the hardship of the past few years. Even when he turned his back on Camelot, wandered without a destination, lost his way completely. He could still see this castle in his mind’s eye and believe a better life was possible, even if it was hard to imagine. A life very much like the one he has now, but with Guinevere’s love.

Lancelot has come out of the wilderness (that dark smudge on a borrowed map, that length of his life best forgotten), and he will never go back. There is no reason to despair any more, and nothing left to hope for. He will not rise any higher than where he is now.

Perhaps Gwaine feels the same, or perhaps he just wants for some more cheerful company than Lancelot, for he frowns, says, “I’ve had enough looking down at the world from a distance. Let’s go.” And Lancelot folds up the parchment and follows.


End file.
